Hello, and thanks for joining us, we hope you’re having a terrible evening.
Throughout history, people have turned to sacred scriptures to answer questions about the meaning of life, and for moral guidance about how we each might bring as much suffering and misery into the world as we can.
Traditionally, the bible has been seen as the definitive guide to cruelty and inhumanity, but recently a growing number of people are suggesting that it’s actually a source of goodness, presenting in many places a morality of kindness and love.
Are such accusations true?
Well, joining us to discuss his controversial take on the subject is Dr. Samuel Richardson, he’s the author of the new book <God is not really all that bad, actually.> and also Rev. John Plague from the Church of Saint Joshua the Holy Genocidal Sadist, an awful evening to you both.
Hello
Horrible to see you.
Dr. Richardson, why don’t you just start by telling us what your book’s all about.
Well, yes, what I argue in the book is that that when you really have a good look at scripture, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that it’s NOT the guide to cruelty and misery that believers have always held it up to be, and that it’s time we admitted that there are some rather lengthy and important sections in there that can legitimately be called morally GOOD,, and that…
That’s nonsense. There's nothing like that at all.
No no, Let him finish,….
and that faith in the bible has undoubtedly INSPIRED and CAUSED a lot of the kindness and compassion we’ve seen in the world throughout history. Yes, obviously the scriptures have played a significant part in motivating outrageous acts of cruelty across the years, but the Bible shouldn’t be given credit for all of the depravity and cruelness that’s been carried out in its name without also taking the blame for truly kind acts, such as building hospitals, showing compassion, that sort of thing.
So in effect you’re suggesting that the bible presents us with not only the familiar cruelty and evil that we all know about, but also a lighter side that can potentially lead people towards being nice to each other.
Well it not only can, but it has and it still is used to justify a lot of compassionate work in the world. Look I know there’re certainly a lot of very evil passages and god is obviously in the vast majority of the book an appalling psychotic maniac, I’m not denying that, but there are also some definitely NICE things in the bible as well, and that’s a real problem that we need to be talking about.
Very interesting, and certainly very controversial. Reverend Plague, your response to that?
No, all these so called “nice” and “kind” things he’s claiming are there in scripture - he’s simply just taking some obscure passages out of context and looking at everything terribly simplistically.
If you look at the scriptures as a unified whole, and look at what it’s saying in its entirety, you’ll see that the overarching theme is that God is absolutely horrible, callous, and evil. If you read it properly, the bible tells the broader story of God, throughout history, causing enormous misery, mostly unjustly, as well as explicitly guiding us, his people, to mistreat and fight against each other, and I’m afraid that a few badly interpreted stand alone passages supposedly about being a little bit pleasant towards one another can't just cancel out that fundamental sadism that we see when we look at the broader picture of scripture.
Well if that’s true though, what IS all this “forgiveness” and “love your neighbour” stuff we read in the bible? You can’t just explain that away by saying context all the time. <<<<<.
See, there he goes, focussing on a few very short isolated passages from towards the very end of the bible and trying to imply that just because they could be interpreted from a very particular closed-minded and biased viewpoint as promoting kindness and “love” even, that that makes God somehow a pleasant and kind being who loves us? I mean it’s just pathetic
What possible meaning are we to take from passages such as “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)” except that doing so would be in line with this God’s morality?
ugh, so simplistic.
Well, how do you read those sections, they're undeniably there, we have the son of God himself appearing to suggest several times that people should behave towards one another with love, St Paul has that very confronting passage in 1st Corinthians that modern believers really like to shy away from and which
Not only do they shy away from it, most believers don’t even know it’s in there.
How so?
Well, believers almost never look at those very loving, compassionate passages, and focus instead on cherry-picking from the nastiest sections they can find.
I mean just ask any believer: did god strike dead an entire nation's first born sons for something that had nothing to do with them, and they’ll nod, oh yes, praise god he killed all of those innocent children and babies and unfairly brought devastating misery upon their families,…
and you ask: Did god inflict famine and drought for decades at a time killing hundreds of thousands? and they’re oh yes, praise be to god for his callousness and brutality and causing so many slow, agonising deaths,
they know those stories from Sunday school, even I can remember going to Sunday school and singing songs about pestilence, famine, flood, and disease, about beheading people, killing family members, that kind of thing, - - - but ask modern believers about a guy called Paul writing a passage glorifying love, and most have never even heard of such a thing, Or those who have just repeat some old excuse about cultural context or bad interpretation . .
We have to read scripture with an open mind and not try to force our modern evil values ONTO the text. I’m sorry, but this is what you get when you taking a very unsophisticated and unnuanced approach to scripture.
Well how would you set him straight? How does one maintain the kind of understanding of God that you have as hideous and evil, yet at the same time not shy away all of the “nice” sections that seem to contradict that?
Well, it comes down to simple hermaneutics, interpreting the scriptures as a whole,
as an entirety, within the context OF the context that scripture was written in,
culturally, as historical documents written across many thousands of years by multiple authors, not only the so-called “nice” sections or indeed the more familiar horror and death-obsessed theme as a whole, what we see is a people's grappling with their own ID, culturally, individually, spiritually, in relation to the evil of God as he reveals it to them, and themselves and their environment and their world as God had created it within the context of the overall evil of God who wanted to guide them towards suffering so cruelly, both in a socio cultural experiential sense but also a deeper spiritual sense, coming back to their identity, as well as their coming to develop an experience of the world in terms of callous cruelty as well as kindness and love which is accounted for within scripture, >>
<<< sorry what does any of this even mean?
..>>both as humans existing not only AS humans but also as children of, as we see, a very evil god…who was threatening them, blackmailing them, and encouraging them to be an expression of his evil in the world that he'd created, but Dr. Richardson probably hasn’t even read it, and if he had, he disbelieves anyway so doesn’t have any firm foundation of immorality upon which to base the claim .
Err,…. Well is all of that perhaps true? Are you not looking at scripture as having been … whatever he just said??
No, this is nonsense, of course I’ve read the whole thing and the extent to which it really is a guide to evildoing, one must go through and cherry pick the really inhumane bits from amongst a plentitude of stuff about, really, what can only be described as unconditional love and caring and benevolence,
>>>Yes, but now YOU’RE cherry-picking.
No, I’m not. These passages are everywhere in scripture, especially in the later books. As I’ve said I’m happy to admit it when the bible presents God as being truly horribly evil. But at other times, and in other moods, HE FORGIVES people. HE SHOWS MERCY. Why won’t you just come out and admit that that’s kind?
What, so you think it’s NICE to stone homosexuals to death, to burn fornicating girls to death with fire, imagine the suffering!
Yes but truly evil people from every society have figured out that that’s the way to mistreat minorities and women, we don’t get that from the bible.
Reverend Plague, we do need to wrap this up so let’s give you the last word.
Look, if you go through the bible you’ll find a broad overarching theme of obscene life-destroying cruelty, violence, and hatred, and THOSE are the revelations of the true character of our AWFUL, FUNDAMENTALLY MALEVOLENT God.
Well - a lively discussion, and I must say, I really hated having to sit here listening to it and I can’t really stand either of you and hope you both die violent deaths very soon.
Ah, thank you that’s very awful of you.
Oh, thank you, same to you.
Throughout history, people have turned to sacred scriptures to answer questions about the meaning of life, and for moral guidance about how we each might bring as much suffering and misery into the world as we can.
Traditionally, the bible has been seen as the definitive guide to cruelty and inhumanity, but recently a growing number of people are suggesting that it’s actually a source of goodness, presenting in many places a morality of kindness and love.
Are such accusations true?
Well, joining us to discuss his controversial take on the subject is Dr. Samuel Richardson, he’s the author of the new book <God is not really all that bad, actually.> and also Rev. John Plague from the Church of Saint Joshua the Holy Genocidal Sadist, an awful evening to you both.
Hello
Horrible to see you.
Dr. Richardson, why don’t you just start by telling us what your book’s all about.
Well, yes, what I argue in the book is that that when you really have a good look at scripture, the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that it’s NOT the guide to cruelty and misery that believers have always held it up to be, and that it’s time we admitted that there are some rather lengthy and important sections in there that can legitimately be called morally GOOD,, and that…
That’s nonsense. There's nothing like that at all.
No no, Let him finish,….
and that faith in the bible has undoubtedly INSPIRED and CAUSED a lot of the kindness and compassion we’ve seen in the world throughout history. Yes, obviously the scriptures have played a significant part in motivating outrageous acts of cruelty across the years, but the Bible shouldn’t be given credit for all of the depravity and cruelness that’s been carried out in its name without also taking the blame for truly kind acts, such as building hospitals, showing compassion, that sort of thing.
So in effect you’re suggesting that the bible presents us with not only the familiar cruelty and evil that we all know about, but also a lighter side that can potentially lead people towards being nice to each other.
Well it not only can, but it has and it still is used to justify a lot of compassionate work in the world. Look I know there’re certainly a lot of very evil passages and god is obviously in the vast majority of the book an appalling psychotic maniac, I’m not denying that, but there are also some definitely NICE things in the bible as well, and that’s a real problem that we need to be talking about.
Very interesting, and certainly very controversial. Reverend Plague, your response to that?
No, all these so called “nice” and “kind” things he’s claiming are there in scripture - he’s simply just taking some obscure passages out of context and looking at everything terribly simplistically.
If you look at the scriptures as a unified whole, and look at what it’s saying in its entirety, you’ll see that the overarching theme is that God is absolutely horrible, callous, and evil. If you read it properly, the bible tells the broader story of God, throughout history, causing enormous misery, mostly unjustly, as well as explicitly guiding us, his people, to mistreat and fight against each other, and I’m afraid that a few badly interpreted stand alone passages supposedly about being a little bit pleasant towards one another can't just cancel out that fundamental sadism that we see when we look at the broader picture of scripture.
Well if that’s true though, what IS all this “forgiveness” and “love your neighbour” stuff we read in the bible? You can’t just explain that away by saying context all the time. <<<<<.
See, there he goes, focussing on a few very short isolated passages from towards the very end of the bible and trying to imply that just because they could be interpreted from a very particular closed-minded and biased viewpoint as promoting kindness and “love” even, that that makes God somehow a pleasant and kind being who loves us? I mean it’s just pathetic
What possible meaning are we to take from passages such as “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you (Matt 5:44)” except that doing so would be in line with this God’s morality?
ugh, so simplistic.
Well, how do you read those sections, they're undeniably there, we have the son of God himself appearing to suggest several times that people should behave towards one another with love, St Paul has that very confronting passage in 1st Corinthians that modern believers really like to shy away from and which
Not only do they shy away from it, most believers don’t even know it’s in there.
How so?
Well, believers almost never look at those very loving, compassionate passages, and focus instead on cherry-picking from the nastiest sections they can find.
I mean just ask any believer: did god strike dead an entire nation's first born sons for something that had nothing to do with them, and they’ll nod, oh yes, praise god he killed all of those innocent children and babies and unfairly brought devastating misery upon their families,…
and you ask: Did god inflict famine and drought for decades at a time killing hundreds of thousands? and they’re oh yes, praise be to god for his callousness and brutality and causing so many slow, agonising deaths,
they know those stories from Sunday school, even I can remember going to Sunday school and singing songs about pestilence, famine, flood, and disease, about beheading people, killing family members, that kind of thing, - - - but ask modern believers about a guy called Paul writing a passage glorifying love, and most have never even heard of such a thing, Or those who have just repeat some old excuse about cultural context or bad interpretation . .
We have to read scripture with an open mind and not try to force our modern evil values ONTO the text. I’m sorry, but this is what you get when you taking a very unsophisticated and unnuanced approach to scripture.
Well how would you set him straight? How does one maintain the kind of understanding of God that you have as hideous and evil, yet at the same time not shy away all of the “nice” sections that seem to contradict that?
Well, it comes down to simple hermaneutics, interpreting the scriptures as a whole,
as an entirety, within the context OF the context that scripture was written in,
culturally, as historical documents written across many thousands of years by multiple authors, not only the so-called “nice” sections or indeed the more familiar horror and death-obsessed theme as a whole, what we see is a people's grappling with their own ID, culturally, individually, spiritually, in relation to the evil of God as he reveals it to them, and themselves and their environment and their world as God had created it within the context of the overall evil of God who wanted to guide them towards suffering so cruelly, both in a socio cultural experiential sense but also a deeper spiritual sense, coming back to their identity, as well as their coming to develop an experience of the world in terms of callous cruelty as well as kindness and love which is accounted for within scripture, >>
<<< sorry what does any of this even mean?
..>>both as humans existing not only AS humans but also as children of, as we see, a very evil god…who was threatening them, blackmailing them, and encouraging them to be an expression of his evil in the world that he'd created, but Dr. Richardson probably hasn’t even read it, and if he had, he disbelieves anyway so doesn’t have any firm foundation of immorality upon which to base the claim .
Err,…. Well is all of that perhaps true? Are you not looking at scripture as having been … whatever he just said??
No, this is nonsense, of course I’ve read the whole thing and the extent to which it really is a guide to evildoing, one must go through and cherry pick the really inhumane bits from amongst a plentitude of stuff about, really, what can only be described as unconditional love and caring and benevolence,
>>>Yes, but now YOU’RE cherry-picking.
No, I’m not. These passages are everywhere in scripture, especially in the later books. As I’ve said I’m happy to admit it when the bible presents God as being truly horribly evil. But at other times, and in other moods, HE FORGIVES people. HE SHOWS MERCY. Why won’t you just come out and admit that that’s kind?
What, so you think it’s NICE to stone homosexuals to death, to burn fornicating girls to death with fire, imagine the suffering!
Yes but truly evil people from every society have figured out that that’s the way to mistreat minorities and women, we don’t get that from the bible.
Reverend Plague, we do need to wrap this up so let’s give you the last word.
Look, if you go through the bible you’ll find a broad overarching theme of obscene life-destroying cruelty, violence, and hatred, and THOSE are the revelations of the true character of our AWFUL, FUNDAMENTALLY MALEVOLENT God.
Well - a lively discussion, and I must say, I really hated having to sit here listening to it and I can’t really stand either of you and hope you both die violent deaths very soon.
Ah, thank you that’s very awful of you.
Oh, thank you, same to you.